Welcome to a more Mindful Melbourne

Our Story

If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.

Pema Chodron

This is our story.

We met through softball. Not that either of us would describe ourselves as sporty, but there it is. We both joined as a way of meeting new people in an unfamiliar city and with the hope of forming a few friendships and some good habits. It turns out that we formed many amazing friendships and found ourselves surrounded by a group of supportive and compassionate people (although whether we have developed good habits remains to be seen).

Not long after meeting we discovered a mutual love of all things craft. This lead to the development of Knittaz 4 Life, our Melbourne-based knitting and craft beer drinking group. There is no doubt that Karen is the guiding force in the crafting arena and has taught me to knit while I have not yet taught Karen to love craft beer.

This is not the only thing that we have in common. As scientists and anxious humans we are also both interested in the evidence-based practice of mindfulness and meditation. We both love Kikki K., bikes and wine. We are both feminists. We have both lived on three continents (coincidentally the same three!). And we agree on pizza toppings. But those are the only things we have in common!

We have radically different tastes in literary, film and music preferences. We disagree on colour schemes. I am ambivalent toward crochet (Karen is not). We have different political views and different upbringings.

But we meet at mindfulness, crafting and Melbourne. So here is our blog about ‘us’.